Yacht JACK TAR: Tunisia 2

Even though we have seen little evidence of the revolution, yesterday we visited Tunis and saw a significant military and police presence around the city centre. And we have seen numbers of young people, probably uni students, who seem to be celebrating the regime change. Perhaps any continuing unrest is their doing; no one else seems the slightest bit interested.
We travelled by louage, a minibus much used by the locals; less than two euros each for the hour long trip. Tunis is a fascinating sprawling city, exotic, chaotic, dirty and great fun. The rubbish strewn streets are off-putting; as bad as we saw in Egypt. The medina was like most bazaars and souks we have seen with shops selling anything and everything and with pushy touts trying to get you in. We think they are suffering the effects of the revolution in a lack of tourists but it is still early times yet.
Tunisia seems a tolerant, liberal society; women dress in all fashions, there are bars where the blokes get stuck into the beer, the predominance of Islam seems far less obvious than was the case in Turkey. We have yet to hear a call to prayer.
The people are all very friendly and despite French being the local lingo we haven`t had any trouble being understood in English. Generally speaking, things are very cheap; meals, booze, groceries, cab fares and even wifi internet are ridiculously cheap. Though still paying EU40/night for the marina berth.
Today we hired a car and drove down to Monastir to buy a new 2.8 m Caribe brand RIB from the factory there. Great boat and the price hard to beat. Check out www.caribeboat.com .
All in all we would recommend Tunisia as a place to visit. Once our new dinghy has been delivered we`ll set sail for a two night crossing to Cagliari in Sardinia.